Doom 4 developer has learnt its lesson over announcing a game too early.

id Software has revealed that it's learnt its lesson over announcing games too early, and in the future hopes to mimic the launch campaign of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

"One thing we did learn with Rage, one of the things that changed was going from no publisher to working with EA to working with Bethesda, we learned that we showed stuff too damn early," id's creative director Tim Willits told Penny Arcade.

"I've said in some talks I was so worried that people would not understand the vehicle-based combat so I talked about it first," Willits added. "We knew we were doing first-person, we're id! Of course we're doing first-person! But [the early talk of vehicles] skewed everyone's ideas so much we had to play catch up. So we talked to EA and, heck we even talked to Activision originally about it, so it went through the publishers, and we teamed up with Bethesda. So when we're ready to show stuff, we'll have a plan."

Going forward Willits pointed to the secrecy and then carefully planned reveal and launch campaign of Skyrim as a model to follow.

"Everyone knew what Todd Howard was working on," Willits said about the secrecy surrounding the development of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

"And it was perfect. So hopefully we can do that again," Willits concluded.

VideoGamer.com Analysis

Going by what Tim Willits has said, you can expect Doom 4 to be revealed when it's less than a year from release - whether that will be on this generation of consoles or the next remains to be seen.